Saturday, November 16, 2013

Just once I'd like to be able to sit down and honestly say I
was wowed. Looking back over the last 2
years of writing for this blog there's a definite streak of snarky in almost
every game I've written about. It's
distressing...

I really want to be able to say that somebody finally got it
right. I'd just love to see a game that
made me proudly proclaim! " I paid $60 for this and it was worth twice
that!"

Alas, it's yet to be...

Case in point, Grid 2.

I was a devout fan of the original Race Driver: Grid, so I
waited with anticipation for its sequel.
The original occupied hours of my time and consumed many more competing
with my friends. I wanted to learn every
nuance of the game and it was actually possible without spending a dime on DLC. If you drove a McLaren, it wasn't going to
handle like a minivan. The tracks were
challenging but not discouraging. The
cars reacted the way you expected them to with the physics spot on. A Camaro was going to drift like a drunken
sailor on a Jet Ski and you could be sure a Pagani Zonda was going to handle
like it was on rails.

Having actually owned a few examples that appeared in the
game I can attest to the accuracy.

Rarely would you get a car that was completely unsuited to a
particular race type or track. It did
happen, but not enough to abandon the game.

Unfortunately, that happens a lot in Grid 2 and that's just
the first of my many annoyances with the game. After many months of avoiding it I went ahead
and loaded up Grid 2 tonight to give it one more shot before declaring it
shunned.

I have about 25 hours into the game so it's not like I
haven't given it a fair chance.

My attempt to redeem the game led me to try a few global
challenge events. In one I was asked to
drive in one of my (least) favorite types
of events called overtake.

In case you don't know, "Overtake" is best
described as a commute on steroids. The
whole idea is to pass a bunch of trucks without running into them . Every pass gives you points and they multiply
with every additional vehicle that succumbs.
The wrinkle is that there's a countdown timer that gradually reduces
your awarded points if you don't pass another vehicle in the allotted
time.

Oh yeah and if you so much as let a hubcap stray off the
track you lose all your current (not banked) points and start at 0 for going
"off-track". I won't even get
into how the trucks can ram you leaving you with the "collision"
penalty. I mean c'mon! At least give me
a whiplash bonus!

That wouldn't be so bad except that you usually get the
wrong car on the wrong track with an astronomical goal almost impossible to
achieve with your available vehicles.

That is, unless you buy DLC packs.

See, Grid 2 has a bad case of "Freemium" disease
except that the game wasn't free. There's
a constant push to get players to buy more DLC for the game. That DLC is almost always in the form of a
selection of better cars. Cars that coincidentally
(NOT) are perfectly suited for the event unlike the sad examples you have
available otherwise. I've literally seen events that had all but one vehicle labeled as an
"add-on." (DLC)

Of course devotees would argue that you could always upgrade
or buy better cars without any DLC but it's a catch 22 since you'll be hard
pressed to win any races without the right car and thus not have too many
greenbacks to purchase that perfect ride.
There's also the issue of some DLC cars being better than anything you
could ever build via the in-game car upgrade system.

Bottom line, the game
is slanted towards DLC and without it just becomes an endless grind. If you wanted to top the leader boards you'll
have to buy every DLC pack available for Grid 2 to get the necessary cars. When you were done, you'd end up paying more than the original purchase price
of the game! ($70)

DLC is supposed to enhance the experience not be a core
component of it. Grid 2's DLC is largely
composed of car bundles and maybe a new route on an old map. New cars are nice but you shouldn't need them
just to play the basic game.

I've literally had a challenge meant for a McLaren with only
the choice of a Volkswagen Golf to race with.
Needless to say I didn't medal in that race. I've also had drift events where my only
choice of car was the aforementioned Mercedes SLR or McLaren road racer. Two cars that were explicitly designed NOT to
kick their tails out! Grid 2 at least
got the physics right on that one.

So it's back to the shelf for Grid 2. It's not fun anymore. The first few weeks were amusing but once I
tired of the pretty scenery it got to be a grind. The real problem is, the game is all glitter
and no gold. Even my regular LAN party
buddies have given up on the game choosing instead to go back to the original
game to satisfy that need for speed.

I'm really tired of being disappointed. I'd honestly like a game to be worth its
purchase price but few are. Think about
this. If a publisher can slap a $60
pre-order price and then give away $15 of DLC then the game is overpriced. It really is that simple.

I'm probably at least a decade older than most people who
write about games which means I have a lot more patience and spend a lot more
time evaluating my game purchases.
Loyalty has a lot to do with that and lately I feel a bit betrayed.

I'll gladly plunk down a few extra greenbacks to extend the
fun but one of the reasons I have yet to buy Battlefield 4 (aside from the
price) is the money machine it's become.
BF4 is about the multiplayer and you're not going to have much fun for
very long without paying EA for DLC.

Truth be told I'll probably buy Call of Duty: Ghosts first
simply because I know the story is good and the co-op won't require me to buy
any DLC. Activision is no better than EA in it's DLC
schemes but at least I'll get my money's worth out of the purchase of the core
game.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

More is better, that's what 100's of years of marketing has
tried to make us believe. Who can argue
with having a bigger house, a gaggle of friends or more money?

If you're a gamer you're very familiar with the mantra of
more. More performance usually means
more clock speed, more memory, more video cards. More of everything except what's in your
wallet after you pay for all of it.

In the swirling vortex of the enthusiast PC market churn is
as natural as the change of seasons.

It is a "market" after all, built on a volume of repeat
sales but often it's participants are disingenuous about the merits of their
wares. It's common, for example, to see
a previous generation's graphics platform get a few tweaks and reintroduced as
something new.

Remember the Nvidia 8800 GT?
It was still around 3 years later having changed names twice before it
finally ended up as the GTS 250. Everything
old is new again I suppose.

We see a market where performance gains from 1 or even 2
generations back only rise to the level of single digit percentages. All of these "features" you hear about while useful are just window
dressing. It obscures the fact that
we're getting more fluff and less substance.

Want a recent example?
Look no further than the latest Intel family of CPU's, Haswell. It's got better power consumption, improved
embedded graphics on the chip (whether you want them or not) and native support
for USB 3.0. Yet in spite of the
marketing, real world performance is
only marginally better than its Ivy Bridge predecessor.

It strikes me that the whole push for more everything may
actually be a sign of failure. It
doesn't say much for innovation if the major players need to recycle old
technology just to fill out a lineup. It
also makes me wonder why in this day of doing more with less that performance
is still measured in having multiples of the same component with features
irrelevant to the primary function.

Copious CPU cores are great if you need them but 90% of us
don't. 2 to 4 threads is more than
enough for most people, 16 is just gross overkill. Multiple
GPU's may be required for ridiculously high resolutions and eye candy but the
average gamer doesn't need them for 1920 x 1080 gaming.

If they do, something is very, very wrong.

I may be speaking heresy here but I really do think the whole
concept of SLI or multiples of the same anything for that matter is a huge
admission that innovation has stalled. I
shouldn't need two graphics cards to do the job of driving one display or even
multiple displays (within reason). I
also shouldn't need 8 cores just to open a spreadsheet.

That we've accepted that configuration for over a decade is
even more damning of the lack of innovation.
We accept lower performance from mobile devices because their
convenience will always trump any performance shortcomings.

$700 to $1000 for a graphics card is neither cheap nor
convenient. That much money should not
require an exponent (x2) for what is ultimately a middling benefit.

Perhaps there are advantages but my point is that at this
stage you shouldn't need 2 of anything just to enjoy a little more than the
bare minimum. We should be an order of magnitude further
along than we are but instead we're forced to buy multiples of what often
amounts to just rehashed old technology.

I don't deny that those of you that have embraced the
concept of more (SLI, 8 core CPUS) are seeing some benefit. I just
believe that the "more" you should be getting has nothing to do with what
you ultimately ended up with.

Forgive me if I lapse
into a bit of gearhead tech but I see a correlation here. For a long time cars depended on a device
called a carburetor to get fuel into an engine.
Over time refinements to its design were made to improve its efficiency but in the
end you still have a largely unregulated fuel delivery system. At the end even computer controls couldn't
provide enough lipstick for that pig. It
took fuel injection to change things.

Right now, PC tech might as well be carburetors. Just refinements to the same old technologies
being passed off as revolutionary.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

That's how much of my life I've spent playing Borderlands 2
and Battlefield 3 over the past 2 years.
I'm sure there's some truly hardcore gamers out there that can attest to
many, many more but I'm just talking about 2 games here.

Why have I invested the equivalent of 3 weeks of my life
into games with a relatively simple premise, i.e., run around and shoot stuff?

Battlefield 3 certainly doesn't have the depth of story of
say a Call of Duty but it's got better multiplayer. Borderlands 2 is unapologetic about its
simplicity. It's all about "87
Bazillion guns" with plenty of targets to test them on. Don't look for any veiled Tom Clancy references
here.

Let's be honest. Both
games are about the grind. In case you
don't recognize the term, in gaming it's a series of repetitive objectives that
must be completed to gain a reward. How
very Pavlovian, do a trick get a treat...

Life may be a journey but while gaming is ultimately about
the destination you can't bore the player while they're getting there. There has to be more than just the promise of
reward to keep you engaged. In a good
game, the grind lives on the razors edge of being challenging without
discouraging the player.

Pretty scenery and player customization alone can't make up
for bad game mechanics and lopsided objectives.
Overcoming obstacles is part of any game but the core design shouldn't
be one of them. Look no further than the
latest installment of EA's Medal of Honor franchise for an example.

Battlefield's take on the grind offered a multiplayer
environment both immersive and beautiful occasionally offering up those
"epic moments" that just don't happen in other shooters. For a gamer
it's a fix that's worth suffering through the cheaters and endless developer
tweaks. What the game may lack in story
it makes up for in realism. Many a middle-aged
gamer has lived out his Rambo tendencies in the virtual desert wastes of Iran. ...and it was fun...

Borderlands 2 allows you to engage your "Mad Max"
fantasies while you strive for ever bigger guns. That's fun for awhile but there's an overarching
storyline with interesting characters that keeps the player engaged. Even if you're doing badly you're still
progressing. Knowing that no action is
ever in vain makes the sometimes insurmountable odds more palatable. Players know that they will eventually win,
you just have to find the right combination. You may even forget that it's just another
gaming grind.

I've played lots of games but few have approached the time
investment I've made with these two.
Call of Duty came close but when missions became unwinnable after dozens
of attempts my interest waned. I've
played many Need for Speed titles as well but found my attention wandering
after one too many skill trees to get past just to unlock a decent car.

Up till now I've been talking largely about the past. Truth be told I haven't played Battlefield 3
since June. EA's incessant push for
add-ons and DLC releases began to veer off into just pretty landscapes without
much more to offer. After 213 hours I'd
had enough. EA made the mistake of
focusing on marketing instead of gameplay and did little to keep my interest.

It was just the same grind but for no real purpose. I set the goal of achieving the rank of colonel
and once I'd accomplished it, I was done.
I was starting to feel the grind instead of enjoying the journey.

I almost gave up on Borderlands 2 as well until Gearbox
released Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's keep DLC. Up to that point there was one remaining
objective in the main game that I was going to have to either grind through what
were now all too familiar missions or cheat the game to beat. Neither was an attractive prospect.

As a gamer we know that regardless of how much we may love a
game, we'll eventually get sick of it.
Battlefield 3 is pretty much dead to me now and that Battlefield 4 is really
just the same game with a prettier face does little to motivate the
purchase.

Still, Battlefield 3 and Borderlands 2 kept my interest
longer than any previous game ever did.
Only the original Borderlands and Star Trek Online came close. The common thread was a focus on the
experience and only when someone took their eye off the ball did I move on.

With games becoming more cinematic and a crossover of talent
from Hollywood, it stands to reason that the gaming experience is becoming more
than just a casual pastime.

That's great news for all those salivating publishers
already awash in the cash from rabid fans of their franchises. But it's both a blessing and a curse. They'll keep putting out titles so long as
they keep making money but at some point you're going to end up with RoboCop
3. That's called milking a franchise and
EA, Activision and Sony are all guilty of it.

I'm quivering in fear over Battlefield 10 for example...

Playing a game should be something you want to do not
something to be suffered in hopes of it getting better with the next level
up. I've often said that in games
there's "challenging" and "stupid." Challenging at least lets me believe I can
eventually win. Stupid happens when you
feel like you're being punished for some unknown sin.

If there's one thing that could save us all from boring game
grinds it's a return of the game demos.
You know, like Doom, Quake and Commander Keen. It's a refreshing change when it actually
happens.

Battlefield 4 offered both a closed and open Beta where you
could try out the game and I appreciated that.
It's also nice to know that my efforts weren't made in a vacuum. The few paltry accomplishments I managed to
achieve in the Beta are still showing up in my stats.

In fact the beta moved me that much closer to purchasing the
game but not enough to pay $60 for it. I
could almost see myself putting a few hundred hours into it, almost. The Beta for Crysis 3, on the other hand,
convinced me that my money was better spent elsewhere.

I'm sure I'll happen across another time sink in the near
future but whether or not it's a triple-A title is by no means a
certainty. I'm already lukewarm on
Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts but you never know.